Healing

The term healing is frequently misused in our standard Western medical system. Most physician rarely use the word healing. In fact it is often considered a dirty term one that is used by faith healers, shaman and fakes. The physician more commonly talks about treating because in medicine most medical problems are rarely ever healed. When a patient is seen by a physician and talks about healing, the physician will frequently tune out. However, when a patient says that he or she has been healed by a physician this same physician will often take credit and say that it was the medications or surgery he performed that healed this patient. 

When the average person thinks about healing they usually have two definitions. One is that the disease or illness disappeared and everything returned to normal. The other is that their symptoms are under control and they feel better. In the first case, the individual wants, expects or has experienced a complete return to normal. Their symptoms are gone, their disability is gone and they are living the life they lived before they became ill. In the second case the disease is still present but the symptoms that made them uncomfortable or unhappy, caused pain and/or suffering are either gone, or much better, or at least tolerable. 

When we talk about healing we imply that the disease or illness process has been mastered. That in fact, it has been accepted and the individual has either eliminated the illness process or has learned to live with it in a kind of peace and harmony. As you will see we do not think of illness as something that happens from out side of us, rather we think of illness as a result of unresolved conflict within the body-self. This unresolved conflict alters body chemistry, impairs or undermines the immune and defensive systems and the healing-repair systems of the body. We think of illness as an intelligent communication from the body to the individual letting him or her know that they have one or more unresolved conflicts which must be looked at and dealt with.

Healing is the process of resolving these conflicts and learning, growing and evolving because of them. We believe that life is a learning process and illness is the indication that we are not learning or that we have made mistakes that require correction. Using this approach illness and healing take on entirely different meanings. They cannot be truly affected by drugs and while drugs can either lessen or cover up symptoms they cannot entirely heal the individual. While it may often appear that drugs and medications help the healing process (and in some cases they do for example when the immune system is not functioning and a bacteria invades and causes and infection antibiotics can help fight the infection and "cure" it), but in fact in most cases it is the fact that the individual took some sort of action, this may be taking the medication, or that they decided that they were doing something to help themselves that was the real source of the resolution of the illness. It might be that they consiously or unconsiously resolved or solved their conflict. 

In the next section we will look at various aspects of healing and those areas and disciplines that are directed not at using drugs to mediate illness, but rather using one or another form of problem solving to heal and eliminate illness.

Click on the following links to read the docuements in this section: 

Healing Your Self and Others 

Huna: Hawaiian Healing System 

Healing Waters Program 

Life Dynamic Training 

Psychoneuroimmunolgy